In 1897 two Oxford archaeologists began digging a low sand-covered mound 100 miles south of Cairo. When they had finally finished, ten years later, they had uncovered 500,000 fragments of papyri and shipped them back to Oxford; the meticulous and scholarly work of deciphering these fragments is still going on today. As well as Christian writings from previously unknown gospels and Greek poems not seen by human eyes since the fall of Rome, there are tax returns, petitions, private letters, sales documents, leases, wills, and shopping lists—the entire life of the market town of Oxyrhynchos, spanning almost a thousand years, encapsulated in its waste paper.

"Parsons has entertainingly revived a noisy, gossiping world of migrant Greeks who lived through the decline of Rome and the rise of Christianity."—Times (London)